Dear Beautiful Gay

by Mary Warren Foulk

In 2021, Mary’s Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) won The Poetry Box’s annual chapbook competition. A hybrid erasure collection, she attempted a redaction, flipping the meaning of her coming out letter and the act itself on its head. Mary was influenced by the work of Jen Bervin, Mary Ruefle, and Ángel García. What if she never had to “come out”? Never had to write such a letter? What if the process was rendered unnecessary—erased? What might she have done with that energy if it hadn’t been exerted on hiding, on passing, on fear, on denial? A few of the questions asked and answered.

Dear Beautiful Gay is a companion collection. Mary remained haunted by the letter and felt there was much more to say. In this current climate and political context, she decided to craft a love letter to her younger self, to her older brother Stephen, to her LGBTQ+ students, family and friends, to all the “Beautiful Gays” in her life. She felt an urgency and a need to celebrate their collective humanity. It is part tribute, part rallying cry.

Early Praise:

Proving herself to be a master of the erasure form, Mary Warren Foulk revisits the 2002 coming out letter she wrote to her mother, which she so beautifully mined for her award-winning collection Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter). Beginning as a tender message of support to her younger self, Dear Beautiful Gay becomes a celebration of— and rallying cry to— friends and family under threat by a society that persists in perceiving them as being outside “the norm.” To read this stunning collection is to experience new waves of meaning and emotion with each poem, not the least of which was my wish that Foulk’s mother (parents) had responded to her coming out with the same loving acceptance that Foulk offers every beautiful gay.

—Linda Ferguson, award-winning writer, author of Of the Forest and Not Me: Poems About Other Women

In a letter, Mary Warren Foulk began her plea to her mother to understand her committed relationship with a woman. A letter meant to open discussion. She looks again at the letter and sees words and phrases embedded, addresses to Dear Beautiful Gay. Her erasures reimagine the letter to yield affirmations, statements of support, and love. The content finds possible rejection but also acceptance and respect. Foulk advises not to be silent, hidden or denying. Dear Beautiful Gay is an exquisite work of erasure that ends with hope, love, and trust for every one of the beautiful gays.

—Tricia Knoll, poet of The Unknown Daughter and Wild Apples

About the Author

A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary Warren Foulk (she/her) has been published in The Hollins Critic, Palette Poetry, Fjords Review, Clockhouse, Silkworm, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and North American Review, among other publications. Her work also has appeared in Who’s Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Soft Skull Press), (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications), and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). She has two award-winning chapbooks, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending (dancing girl press) and Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) (The Poetry Box). Her newest collection, The Show Must Go On (Fernwood Press, 2025), was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award, and the Inlandia Institute’s 2022 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Word Works’ 2022 Washington Prize.

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by Emily-Sue Sloane

These poems are a meditation on the myriad divisions and inequities we face, both personally and as a society. In Disconnects and Other Broken Threads, award-winning poet Emily-Sue Sloane pulls on many of the fraying threads that divide us and gently weaves them with striking imagery to inspire connections through hope and, at times, humor.

Enjoy a Video of Emily-Sue Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for Disconnects and Other Broken Threads:

In Emily-Sue Sloane’s powerful new chapbook, Disconnects and Other Broken Threads, the poems’ directness about suffering, loss and injustice tears at our hearts and asks us to recognize what needs healing or that we must grieve bravely what may never be healed. Sloane sees, feels and speaks with honesty that will not accept the glib comfort of pretense. In “A Daughter’s Question,” she says of the speaker’s mother: She never said / and I never thought to ask / until it was too late / what made her so angry. The poem reaches out with a broken heart. It asks us to open ours. Sloane suggests again and again, with rage, regret, humor, irony and anger: This is what it takes to be alive.

—Scudder Parker, poet and author of Safe as Lightning

Reading these poems is like microdosing on the big, unwieldy emotions we may struggle to put into words late at night around a campfire, looking up at the stars. Like a gardener cultivating a bonsai tree, Emily-Sue Sloane takes big, wild concepts like mortality, impotent rage, grief and regret and presents them to us as stark small snapshots of everyday life. The overwhelming world pulls back a little as these words gently take our hands and say, I know. I know. Me too.

—Rorie Kelly, singer/songwriter, Shadow Work (album)

In Disconnects and Other Broken Threads, Emily-Sue Sloane protests the ills of society which destroy people and ideals, the personal failings which lead to broken lives and the eternal human lament upon the death of beloved persons. Indignant of social injustices, she deconstructs the makeup of contemporary life, giving a thundering voice to the voiceless (“Hollow-Eyed Hunger,” “Freedom Canceled,” “Undone”).

In spite of the wonderfully tantalizing title, the poet weaves subtle hidden connections—how wonderful or ironic that in this chapbook’s very first poem, “Hard-Wood Wisdom,” the lyric voice is that of an oak tree’s bark speaking in first person. The connection is unmistakable. Compassion, love, ideals and dreams underlie the brokenness. Throughout, the reader will encounter and enjoy the music traditionally associated with poetry, but all too often absent today—alliteration, assonance, rhythm: Time shreds memories / into random wisps, / seaweed swept ashore / only to be snatched / back by rapacious tides.

—Tonia Leon, bilingual poet and translator,
author of My Beloved Chaos and Slow-Cooked Poetry/Poesia a fuego

About the Author

Emily-Sue Sloane is an award-winning poet who published her first full-length collection, We Are Beach Glass, in 2022. She has won first-place awards from Calling All Writers, the Long Island Fair, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society, Performance Poets Association and Princess Ronkonkoma Productions. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Amethyst Review, The Avocet, Bards Against Hunger, Boston Literary Magazine, Corona, Evening Street Review, Front Porch Review, Long Island Sounds Anthology, Mobius Magazine, MockingHeart Review, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Review, Panoplyzine, The Poeming Pigeon, PoetryBay, The RavensPerch and Shot Glass Journal. Sloane holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Vassar College and lives in Huntington Station, NY, with her wife, singer-songwriter Linda Sussman. In addition to writing, she enjoys reading, yoga and exploring her native Long Island’s natural beauty.

Learn more at https://EmilySueSloane.com.

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